Moms are always busy. Moms take care of their homes, most work outside their home, they get kids to and from school, they volunteer, they take care of pets, they spend time with friends, and many even find time to relax, somewhere in there. We’ve always known this, but now it is proven through an official study.
The study is from the research division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. It studied the effect of children on work productivity for “highly skilled” women over the course of a career. According to Ylan Q. Mui from the Washington Post:
“They decided to analyze the amount of research published by more than 10,000 academic economists as a proxy for performance. A job in the ivory tower of academia requires higher education by definition, and their work is easily searched, recorded and ranked.”
Here are some of the surprising results: Men who are fathers of more than one child and those without children had similar performances throughout most of their careers. Men with two or more children were the most productive of both groups.
The difference in the women’s groups, however, was larger. The authors found that women who never have children were less productive than women who have children. When women with one child were compared with women who had two or more, there was a slight difference in performance. The bottom line is that women with two or more children were the most productive.
One thing that Mui at The Washington Post made clear was that most of these women were highly educated and had good jobs. More than likely they planned their pregnancies and were able to have good childcare or babysitters in order to return to work. Not all moms are that well off when it comes to children and a having a full time job. Depending on their job they may not receive paid maternity leave or have the ability to pass off a sick kid to a nanny. Somehow, they still manage to keep their job and be productive.
One glaring part of the study found that a women’s productivity level drops when their kids are young. Productivity drops about 9.5% with the first child, 12.5% for the second, and 11% decrease with the third. The bottom line for that is that three kids who are preteens, will cause a 33% loss in productivity for a mom, on average.
However, once the kids are older, the moms work evens out and they do quite well. “While you have small children, it has an impact on you,” said Christian Zimmerman, one of the paper’s authors. “But after that, it seems that the impact is the other way.” Busy moms are productive. They have lots to do, every single day. Moms can say yes to one more thing, because they know how to multi-task and get things done.
So, for all you moms out there carting kids to hockey practice, baking for the Christmas party, and holding down a job, we salute you. We promise we won’t ask one more thing of you.
